Cleveland Financial Group

one of the oldest alliances of monopolistic capital in the USA. In the late 1960’s it was the fifth largest of the groups outside the major US financial centers. Total assets in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were more than $25 billion. It is centered in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Cleveland financial group is based on ferrous metallurgy, mining, and railroad transport, and its activities are linked with the needs of the automobile industry of Detroit. Unlike many financial groups in the USA it does not have an extended network of big credit-finance institutions (banks, insurance and investment companies, pension funds). The group arose at the end of the 19th century as a coalition of three families: Eaton, Mather, and Hanna. Since the mid-1950’s and early 1960’s the Mathers have played a secondary role. Today the group comprises three powerful monopolistic subgroups: Eaton, Humphrey-Hanna, and a joint subgroup of several monopolies from Cleveland and the Midwest. Eaton controls the US iron-ore companies Steep Rock Iron Mines, Cleveland-Cliffs Iron, and Ungava Iron Ores; the steel corporations Republic Steel, Inland Steel, Detroit Steel, Wheeling Steel, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube; and the coal-mining company West Kentucky Coal. In the 1950’s Eaton gained control over the New York Central Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and in 1963 it took over the Baltimore and Ohio. In the early 1970’s it controlled assets of industrial, transport, and financial corporations amounting to more than $7 billion. Humphrey-Hanna controls Consolidation Coal (a mining concern), National Steel, and Hanna Mining. Through Consolidation Coal the subgroup owns assets in Chrysler, the National City Bank of Cleveland, and General Reinsurance, which insures property. The total value of assets controlled by the subgroup in the early 1970’s was more than $6 billion. The third subgroup arose through the mutual interests of several big banks and also includes industrial and transport corporations of Cleveland and the Midwest. The total value of assets of this subgroup in the early 1970’s amounted to more than $13 billion. The Cleveland financial group has large capital investments in Canada.